Abstract

Molecular techniques, such as DNA Barcoding, are useful in species identification. BOLDSystems, or Barcode of Life Data System, is an open repository database developed by the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics (CBG) that holds millions of sequences. This online workbench and database groups and organizes molecular and morphological information, and makes the data available to scientific community. One limitation of BOLDSystems data has been the reliability and accuracy of the species identifications. To evaluate usefulness of BOLDSystems data, we examined 229 specimens in the genus Alloxysta Förster, 1869 (Hymenoptera: Cynipoidea: Figitidae: Charipinae) borrowed from BOLDSystems. In addition to evaluating the quality available COI sequences, we also examined morphological characteristics from primarily lateral habitus images of the 229 vouchers and provide recommendations for improvement. We found some specimens were misidentified and discovered at least one new species among them. At the end of the study, we provided here recommendations for improvement and incorporated our results from this study via the database portal. Our results indicate that data on BOLD and other such databases require well-trained taxonomists to verify species determinations based on primarily molecular data. It is important that molecular and morphological information be combined in order to improve species identification.